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pchapman

What do you think of the new dropzone.com format?

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Ouch, so much white space. Did they buy shares in scroll wheel manufacturers? The old school site was good because it was information dense and one could see a lot of topics and posts at once.

At least it is better on a phone -- lines wrap instead of being very wide and requiring the smallest possible type to avoid scrolling left and right. Making the site phone-friendly would have been one of their goals. But on a desktop with a decent sized screen, it really wastes space. (Setting text size to 70 or 80% helps a little in getting text back to original size, but doesn't do much for the white space.) This kind of crappy design is unfortunately  more and more common these days, I guess for fat fingers on small tablets.

Have we lost all records of what threads and posts we've seen? One can't start where one left off; one is dumped back to post #1 on page #1 even if it is a thread one has been following while logged in.

The addition of drag and drop files is a big plus of course. A couple Facebook rigging forums must have been benefiting from having easy uploads from phones.

Other opinions and discoveries about the site are welcome...
 

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I made a post on this a few minutes ago in the "error & feedback" forum.

I like it. Mostly.

The posts are formatting weird, though. "Quotes" and "XXX posted" doesn't seem right. Siglines aren't segregated from the body of the post. 

The "poster info" for each post is different too. No jump numbers, year in sport, location, that sort of stuff. And what is the 'total reputation' thing? 

Overall, it's a nice improvement. But it will take some getting used to. Just like any change.

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I’m not feeling the love. I think he had to do something to cater to the audience with small screens. But this is looking like it could be the end for me. I’ll wait and see for a while. I haven’t found a search function yet. Without that a ton of rigging knowledge will be inaccessible.  

There is too much content here for this format to be effective.

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55 minutes ago, obelixtim said:

Utter Rubbish. I guess its a good excuse to abandon DZ.com for good.  If it ain't broke...…..

I'm sure quite a few regular posters will disappear from here. 

I'm, with you, Tim.  There is not one thing better about it.

100+% garbage.

Jerry  Baumchen

PS)  Anyone know where the Messages are?

PPS)  And, where did the PREVIEW POST go?

PPPS)  And, why the double-line spacing?

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(edited)
1 hour ago, pchapman said:

Ouch, so much white space. Did they buy shares in scroll wheel manufacturers? The old school site was good because it was information dense and one could see a lot of topics and posts at once.

 

 

Hmmmm..... maybe turn off the ad blocker. What did you think the white space is for?:)

 

It's magic! Edit just appeared.

Edited by gowlerk

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Hey guys,

I realize that the change may be something one feels uncomfortable with at first, but there was method to the madness for sure. 

Mobile traffic is now the majority on the site, so to cater to mobile first is catering to the majority of the users. So OP is very much correct in that getting the site to actually be readable for majority of visitors was the number 1 priority.

With regards to the white space, it's a change but it's more in line with what modern design standards are these days. It doesn't make sense to move to a new CMS and then to keep the same archaic 90s design that we had. I realize that the old cramped style is what you guys are used to, but at least give the white space a chance, as it's considered to be far better for readability.

"If it ain't broke don't fix it", to be honest it was broken. Very broken. There was no way for anyone other than a desktop user to enjoy the site as it was a complete mess. Not only that but our old CMS was very restricted in terms of technology moving forward. We're hoping to develop new tools and functionality that will make the site far more interesting for users, but we needed a change to make that happen. This will also end up decreasing spam and scammers.

With regards to ad block, we're definitely going to be looking to enforce turning off ad block. We designed the site in a way that it will look better with ads than without. And the simple fact of the matter is, we run almost primarily on ads and without them dropzone.com would not be able to sustain itself. We're still happy to hear feedback on problematic ads you encounter that may hinder your experience, and to resolve them serving. 

Quote

PS)  Anyone know where the Messages are?

PPS)  And, where did the PREVIEW POST go?

PPPS)  And, why the double-line spacing?

Messages are in the large envelop icon on the top right.

Posts are automatically previewed, the editor shows a real representation of what the post will look like when posted, so it's providing a real time preview.

3 hours ago, gowlerk said:

But no ability to edit my post. Am I supposed to get it right the first time? Talk about a brave new world! And about that disappearing sig line......

The edit ability is a bug and we will resolve it. The signature line is the same, there should be a visible breaker between the signature and post, which we will fix too.


IMPORTANT: We'd appreciate it if you could post any concerns about functionality to the feedback forums, or the bug forum in the announcements. Having numerous threads reporting issues makes it harder to track and resolve. Or to give you answers about getting used to the new layout.

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(edited)

I do like the more modern feel but the front of the forums definitely has too much white space for a pc.  You should be able to distinguish mobile from desktop browsers and make minor adjustments.  The forum list is showing archives and its definitely a lot of white space with the topics and posts using one column.  The one above the other adds tons of empty space on a pc.  It's definitely modern looking but tweaks to make it look good on a pc/laptops while preserving your mobile design would make it better all around.

UI is tough but you have to make it look and feel good on a variety of platforms and not cater to just mobile or whatever.  Classifieds for example have a lot better overall use of white space and you can see a lot of info pretty quickly

Edited by kat00
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19 minutes ago, kat00 said:

I do like the more modern feel but the front of the forums definitely has too much white space for a pc.  You should be able to distinguish mobile from desktop browsers and make minor adjustments.  The forum list is showing archives and its definitely a lot of white space with the topics and posts using one column.  The one above the other adds tons of empty space on a pc.  It's definitely modern looking but tweaks to make it look good on a pc/laptops while preserving your mobile design would make it better all around.

UI is tough but you have to make it look and feel good on a variety of platforms and not cater to just mobile or whatever.  Classifieds for example have a lot better overall use of white space and you can see a lot of info pretty quickly

Thanks for the feedback. I've adjusted the forum permissions for the archives, which were meant to be hidden and definitely was the last time I tested. But I've found the problem there and resolved that.

With regards to the white space, our main focus here now is to ensure that users don't feel like important information is being left out in the white space. The white space is more a result of widening the forum layout, we moved from around 650px widths on pages to nearly double that on desktops, the reasons why mobile may feel more nice and compact is just because the screen width is much lower.

But we don't think the white space is a result of removing anything? If it is, please let us know.

And we are looking into adding possible forum descriptions on desktop, in order to reduce the feeling of excessive white space on the main forum page.

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Well, since I didn't participate in the well-advertised testing, I don't think I have a lot of room to complain. But I'm wondering -- I actually find this new format better on the desktop than it was on the cell phone (iPhone). The increased white space can be compensated for on the laptop, and not on the phone, which leads to a very serial "if you don't walk down the right path you'll miss stuff" experience. Same as with FB, which I find to have an interface that lends itself to drop-in visits more than discussions. And at least on SC, where most of my posts have been lately, I'd rather have a discussion-friendly format. But that's partly my personal reading and posting style, and can't necessarily be the rule for everyone.

Wendy P.

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(edited)
23 minutes ago, SethInMI said:

There is an Ignore Poster! this is awesome

image.png.0ecab7f04b858c5f7cf74787cf3904f8.png

Whoa!

I do you access that feature?

When I take the link to "Ignored Users", I just get a 404 Error.

 

ETA: Never mind. I found it under "Account Settings".

Edited by ryoder

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4 hours ago, ryoder said:

Whoa!

I do you access that feature?

When I take the link to "Ignored Users", I just get a 404 Error.

 

ETA: Never mind. I found it under "Account Settings".

hover over the person's icon at a post and get a pop up with options to ignore or message the person

 

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